The Abyss Stares Back

The Six-Million Goldpiece Man

13

APR/15

We step over the dead specialist and enter the room that Mads slammed shut behind her. Inside is another laboratory, this one containing two cots (presumably for the assistants), a journal, and a number of medicinal sample jars. The jars are labeled with our names, and although the fluids in the jars designated for us are limited (some blood and hair), there are also jars for Sebastian with a more extensive (and intimate) collection.

The journal details the last few weeks of the specialists work, including her departure from the asylum, intensive torture sessions and Sebastian’s conversion into a vampire. It turns out that the Vistani matron was right – his visions eventually did kill him, despite our efforts to blacken his soul into compatibility with Ravenloft. Near the end, she expresses her disbelief in us as the Synod. She doesn’t get a chance to talk about how we murdered her. Oh well. She does mention some damning statements about Sebastian, like how she sent him out to find us and maybe lure us into the mayor’s house, which he did. He didn’t tell us about that…

We do a bit more bookkeeping. Mads puts an additional entry in her journal saying that she is going to go out and look for Sebastian to throw anyone reading the book off her real location, which is dead in the next room.

In the next room over we find a few more items of interest. One is a summoning portal through which, we believe, the woven are being brought. Disrupting it will prevent any more from being imported, as well as cut the present ones off from their source, which I have just decided is important. We also find a recently-dug grave that we believe was used to store Sebastian during his vampiric fermentation.

Before we leave, I convince Mads to let me dissect the remaining road warden, and I am confident that, with the knowledge gleaned from the procedure, I will be able to remove the remaining Woven without killing the rest of the villagers.

And then it is off to the evening! And the inevitable fight. We return at the appointed hour to meet with Cassimere, and he is very excited to get started! But then we get to participate in a Truxican standoff, with both Casimere and Blackburn waiting for the other to attack. So we take the initiative and trick the vampires into starting the assault.

And then we fight! The two leaders take on each other in a sea of chomping minions while we take on the mid-level. And we kill the fuck out of them, like we do. Finally, the Favorite gets the better of Blackburn, throwing him down off of the balcony and threatening to kill him if we don’t give up. But that plays right into our plans, and Milosh charges forward, thrusts a stake into Blackburn’s chest and chortles in glee. And then Casimere, desperate to avoid a kill steal, tears out Blackburn’s throat.

The whole distraction is enough to get Mads into position behind him, and we continue the fight. A few devastating hits later, and the Favorite is down, but we are not quick enough to stake him before he turns to mist and flows upstairs. We follow, fighting or way through the house for the right to stake him first. Finally, we kick out way into his bedroom and three-way impale him, ending his unholy existence.

The townspeople, after seeing us defeat everyone important, finally rise up against the cultists. As they say, better late than never…